Friday, March 17, 2006

By request – Bullshit in the Show Me State...

Disgusted in St. Louis requested a bitch’s thoughts on the recent move by Missouri lawmakersto not fund contraception and infertility treatments. This move will directly impact the ability of low-income families to plan their parenthood. It cuts funding on the notion that condoms and the pill 'encourage' sexual activity...and Gawd forbid people make a personal choice to get laid without being married.

This is a war on women…poor women in particular, but all women are under the gun here. Yeah…a bitch went there. Fuck it…if it walks like it and talks like it, call it what it is. So, let’s explore this move a bit.Hell, a bitch will step up and toss my testimony down for this one!

This bitch has uterine fibroids. Fibroids are a royal pain…not cancerous, but a literal royal and complete pain. A few years back a bitch had a myomectomy, which removed most of the fuckers. But fibroids grow back. One key part of my ongoing treatment is the use of the pill, which helps slow the growth of fibroids and also keep those pesky 15 day periods from popping up.

My fibroids were painful. A bitch used to double over in cramping pain. This bitch had regular 15 day periods, was exhausted all the time and was in pain a lot. The physical ramifications were heinous…several fibroids had attached to my innards (wink) and were on track to create a blockage that would have fucked my world from hell to middle earth and back again.So a bitch had surgery (ugh)…took some nifty hormone shots for 6 months (and you think my ass is bitchy now) and then went on the pill.

My use of the pill has nothing to do with fucking…sex…getting busy…getting my freak on…making love. My use of the pill is purely medical. My surgery was necessary, but would have been a waste of time without the ability to slow the rapid growth of those motherfuckers.

The pill is not used exclusively as a contraceptive and the expanded use of the pill should not be an option exclusvely reserved for the privately insured.

Which takes us to the reality behind this bill of bullshit. For a bitch, this bill would have meant no treatment options for my fibroids if my ass lost my healthcare coverage. They would have continued to grow, obstructed my bowels and thrown my ass into the hospital…where they would have recommended a hysterectomy because they probably don’t cover myomectomies on Medicaid...and where this bitch would have mounted up a huge medical bill fronted by Missouri instead of the proactively lower medical bill rational pill-based treatment would have created.

My uterus…my health…my fucking choice...would have been shot to hell because some complete fucktool in Jefferson City fears a wild sex orgy resulting from access to contraceptives. This is wrong, misguided, reckless and unethical. A bitch hasn’t even begun to explore the family planning ramifications resulting from this shit.

Y'all wanna throw down on this?

A bitch is ready, willing and able.

Missouri has declared war. They are saying, in their own peevish passive aggressive way, that they want poor and low-income women to be legally restricted or reap the whirlwind.

Choice?

Out the fucking window!

Public policy dictated from the pulpit?

Come on down!

So, how is this different from some cleric telling their government what policies to enact in the Middle East?

Actually...well, shit!...we're the ones self identifying as a democracy.

Mayhap it's time for some Missouri lawmakers to take a look at the aspiring fascist in the mirror...

20 comments:

I totally agree AND relate. I take BCPs for Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, and while the unmedicated me is not so prone to hospitalization as it sounds like the unmedicated you would be, my life is a helluva lot better and easier with those hormones in me. Now don't get me wrong, I do enjoy growing hair where it shouldn't grow and having it fall out in clumps from where it should grow, not to mention the joy of acne, but I'm probably strange that way.

But you know what, even if I were using the pill exclusively to maintain some kind of sexy sexy lifestyle, it should still be covered by my insurance and it's not. Reliable birth control is, as far as I'm concerned, a fundamental human right. If a woman can't control when and if she has kids, she can't control much else.

preach, ABB. After I spent a month having a non-stop period and found out i had stopped ovulating? I *had* to take the pill, for months afterwards. Do people not get the idea of "medical treatment"? dumbasses.

I betcha they'd be happy to pay for medicare-sponsored chastity belts.

... and this is where the issue of privacy comes in and why the ban on contraception was deemed unconstitutional in the first place. I've had two myomectemies since 1990 and those dang fibroids are back - bigger and better than ever. Consequently, I am so frickin' anemic that I've been put on Seasonale so that my cycle will not start so I will not bleed to death. Now, my doctor has tons of samples so, under his treatment, I've never had to buy them. BUT, under normal circumstances, most doctors would have just written a prescription and then I'd be at the mercy of some zealot trying to tell me I have to bleed to death in order to prevent me from being "promiscuious."

Almost everyone I know who is on the pill is on it primarily for some type of medical reason. I know I am SICK OF THESE CRAZIES trying to worry about whose getting some! My doctor told me that my uterus looked like a bag of marbles w/all the fibroids (and I saw the MRI ... he wasn't lying). I'm irritated enough by the condition. I imagine I'd be across the counter and at someone's throat if they tried to deny my right to medication.

I began experiencing symptoms of endometriosis around the age of fifteen. First I would display signs of shock; blood would leave my extremities, leaving my hands cold and my face ashen. If I didn't take my huge horse (pain) pills and get my ass into the bathtub within about an hour, the pain that came in waves of intensity, would be blinding.

Finally came my salvation, Menstrual Control Pills. That's what I affectionately called them at the time. After the 5th month, not only could you set a watch by my cycle, there were actually times I didn't even need an Advil!

Other then a misguided time in my early twenties when I attempted to 'get off' them (I don't know what I wasn't thinking) I have been on them for fourteen years.

The very idea that my doctor could not prescribe the pill to a fifteen year old girl, for some ass-backward idealism, causes an almost physical reaction.

I am thankful I was never shamed for using/needing this medicine/choice.

PS: My two cents... it's all a matter of packaging. There's some type of Rx to help smokers quit; however, it's the same active ingredient as Wellbutrin, but it's only marketed differently.

If this is such a problem... the INTENT of the Rx, why don't the doctors do something to advocate for their patients and solicit the pharmaceutical companies to package the BCPs as something else. To me it seems simple enough.

PS: NOt everyone who has pcos is on BCPs as treatment. To treat pcos without addressing the androgen problems accomplishes nothing. Just my honest opinion.

If this is really morality-driven legislation - where are the restrictions on MEN? Where is the law making Viagra illegal? Limiting options for men with prostate cancer? Where does the donward spu=iral for men kick in - limiting them to being homebound, or underemployed, limiting educational options?

This is "keep women in their place" legislation - and it sucks to all hell!!!

There is no doubt that this is a war on women, but the ultimate goal of the Republican Theocracy doesn't stop there. They really seem to be guided by Mararet Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, a novel that when I first read it 20 years ago was considered a dark science fiction, but has now become a social condemnation of the Radical Religious Right who seem to have adopted it as a doctrine in their war against all sexuality other than their own mandate of forced matrimonial sex for Christian procreation only.

Quote from New Yorker article not available online (by the author in the interview linked here and above):Religious conservatives are unapologetic; not only do they believe that mass use of an HPV vaccine or the availability of emergency contraception will encourage adolescents to engage in unacceptable sexual behavior; some have even stated that they would feel similarly about an H.I.V. vaccine, if one became available.

"We would have to look at that closely," Reginald Finger, an evangelical Christian and former medical adviser to the conservative political organization Focus on the Family, said. "With any vaccine for H.I.V., disinhibition" -- a medical term for the absence of fear -- "would certainly be a factor, and it is something we will have to pay attention to with a great deal of care."

Finger sits on the Centers for Disease Control's Immunization Committee, which makes those recommendations.

Why not vaccinate the Right against wrong? (via the Chicago Sun-Times):From quashing stem cell research to promoting the teaching of Christian creation myth in public schools, from gagging government scientists to stifling anti-global warming efforts, the Bush administration is leading a theocratic assault on rationality that we would snicker at in another country but barely notice unfolding here.

The really jaw-dropping part is the administration's view of any medical advance that might lessen the wages of sin. Merck is trying to get FDA approval for a vaccine against the virus that causes cervical cancer and is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the country. Lives would be saved by the vaccine, but the politicized Bush FDA will probably deny approval, as the disease -- like all VD -- is a handy ally to the Religious Right in its battle against sex.

I knew that the moral mullahs of this country point obsessively to disease and pregnancy in their campaign for sexual inhibition. But I didn't quite realize -- and it embarrasses me to admit this -- that they are also against curing such diseases, so as not to encourage sin. An anti-HIV vaccine, rather than being celebrated, might actually be denied FDA approval -- in this country, of course. The rest of the modern world, unencumbered, moves steadily into the future without us.

Pardon me ABB for deciding to cross post this at my blog after I post it here. I didn't think I would wind up referencing all these links, but this shit scares me! Clicking through to read the articles and having read the books is both frightening and depressing.

I take the pill just for severe menstrual cramping and to prevent loss of iron. I'm quite happy to walk around dazed and confused, performly poorly at my job -- but if anyone expects me to wear the blame for that, I'll just take it up another notch, and start the killin.

Another agree and relate, I was on the pill for a year, when I had insurance through my university. They initially refused to pay for the pill so my Dr. wrote them a lovely letter saying that this was medically prescribed to treat endomitriosis since they did not want to pay for other treatment options I got the pill, as it was not covered otherwise.

I did an informal survey of all the women I knew at the time who were on the pill and almost all of them were on it for reasons other than birth control.

Great, great points. And let's not even get into the insane hypocrisy of insurance coverage VIAGRA on insurance but NOT the pill! As far as I know, Viagra has no alternate health benefits, and can be used to somewhat reverse the effects of chemical castration (for rapists).

I've got endometriosis, and I can tell you that the pill has been essential in my general well-being since my laser laparoscopy in 2000. If it weren't for the pill and those new ThermaCare heating pads, I'd be calling in sick a hell of a lot more often.

This is absolutely a war on women.

As it is, in California, my insurance provider only allows me to pick up one month worth of the pill at a time, even though I'm on a 90-day-active-pill cycle. That means I have to go to the damned pharmacy every 21 days in order to take my prescription the way my doctor told me to. What the hell do they think I'm going to do with an extra couple of months worth of pills? Start distributing them to children? Take them all at once? WTF?

About the HPV vaccine, yes, amazing that anyone would argue against it, although, it DOES only effect women, and then, as they see it, only the ones skeazy enough to *gasp* have sex (although you can actually get HPV w/o engaging in said activity, which debunks even the most ridiculous assertion that it could "promote promiscuity". wtf). But I digress... Besides all of the very real medical reasons a woman would need birthcontrol, there is also just this simple fact, which a wise person once told me: birth control is kind of like seatbelts in cars; driving can sometimes be dangerous, and result in unintended consequences (like accidents). You don't outlaw driving, you just advocate seatbelts, 'cause people are going to drive regardless, and better that they at least have some protection...

THAT WE WOULD BE DENIED THAT PROTECTION WHILE VIAGRA IS BEING HANDED OUT LIKE CANDY, well, it is just infuriating.

ABB and other suffering ladies on here, do you use the pills to skip your periods? If you don't, you should. Email me. I wrote my undergraduate Women's Studies thesis on the topic of menstruation suppression and recently helped a girl in grad school write a paper on the same topic. No reason to have your period if it's making your life hell. Maybe I'll make a video on my video blog about it...more people NEED this information!